The future of work is distributed: leadership, space - and time

In building the modern, responsive, antifragile organisation, we have adopted models in which leadership is distributed (think agile, to lean start-up, to holocracy etc). But the accelerating impact of COVID-19 identifies two other ways in which distribution is the key to understanding the future of work.
Distributed across space, has become a given. Many of us have been asked to work from home, accelerating our understanding of the tools which allow us to work in teams operating across distributed space.
And as we consider how we may emerge from lock-down in a pre-vaccine world, we find ourselves rapidly coming to terms with work having to be distributed across time.
The time constraints of traditional working; 9-5; 5 days-a-week; 25 days holiday; bank holidays etc are likely to be a problem to be overcome as we build a new normal.
Imagine, for example, the challenge of mass transit commuting. Could we see regulations limiting our travel to specified and immutable times - eg You are issued with a start and finish time so that there are no commuting peaks. Your start time may be 6am. Mine 7am, my colleagues 8am, etc through to folk starting at 5am 23 hours later. To make that more effective we may have to break that down to 15 minute slots. All to avoid being closer than 2m from the next person on your commute.
Imagine working in manufacture; 24-hour working with reduced numbers 'on' per shift may have to replace a one or two shift models across 'daytime'.
It's a monumental task, which will accelerate distributed leadership, too. The boss can't be there 24/7. A decision maker will have to be. So the pressure to distribute decision making power to those 'on the job' will inevitably build.
It will accelerate distribution through space too - you may only be allowed to travel on certain days, so the push to get still better at working across space, usually from home, will only get harder.
Making the organisation flexible requires that people are flexible too. Cultural norms around 'time off' that everyone can share (weekends, bank holidays, evenings) will inevitably be challenged.
In the next few months all of us will be involved in rapidly innovating new models of distributed work - through leadership, space and time.
The lessons we learn from this crisis will help us create more antifragile organisations, better able to cope with the shocks that are yet to come.
How ready are you?

Photo by Heather Zabriskie on Unsplash